When selecting procurement sources, Mazda adamantly maintains a fair and impartial tendering system and a transparent selection process, ensuring equal opportunities for any supplier regardless of country and scale of enterprise. This enables us to fulfill our responsibilities to suppliers. We carry out open and fair procurement on the basis of objective comparison of companies after quantifying numerical values for each manufacturer's technological prowess, quality assurance capacity, cost competitiveness and other factors.
While optimizing the quality and cost of parts and materials purchased in this way, we also stipulate that suppliers must meet their social responsibilities. At the tendering stage, we require compliance with our social responsibility guidelines.
This set of guidelines particularly emphasizes treatment of employees by the manufacturer, including the exclusion of employment of workers under the age of sixteen, maintenance of a reasonable working environment and respect for human rights. This adds up to a pledge from the company's senior management to treat its employees with respect.
Similarly, Green Procurement Guidelines are presented to manufacturers, requiring ISO 14001, international certification for environmental management systems, and compliance with environmental laws.
Mazda can therefore work with suppliers selected in this way to fulfill its social responsibilities, in terms of respect for human rights and environmental protection, in every step of the supply chain right through to the delivery of automobiles to customers.
Through the joint programs, Mazda has broadened its procurement base and expanded business opportunities for its existing suppliers. That is to say, while Mazda started sourcing from new suppliers in Europe and China, its existing suppliers in Japan were able to strike up procurement arrangements with Ford.
The key to this arrangement is that Mazda fulfills its responsibilities to suppliers, while encouraging its suppliers to fulfill their responsibilities to society. This goes far beyond issues of cost. It involves investment to build mutually beneficial relationships to grow together.